Posted by Jon​A team I know well recently showed me the front cover of a proposal they’d submitted for a construction project upgrading a major road. The image? A beautiful photograph of a highway, heading into the distance at sunset.

“Very neat to have used a photograph of the road,” I commented.

There was an embarrassed silence, before the eventual confession: “It’s not actually the road… It’s just a stock image.”

We always talk about using appropriate images on the front cover. A photo of the road on which they’d be working would be great. One of a different road entirely creates precisely the wrong impression.

​(And why stop at a photo of the road as it is now? A debate on the choice of images might include an artist’s impression of the road after its upgrade; a map of the route – especially if there was any clever differentiation, such as finding a shorter path for it to save money; a combination of before and after?)

Some time ago, I was working on a proposal to be submitted to a government agency in a foreign country. We selected an image from that region of the country, and ran it past the salesperson for a final check.

The salesperson informed us that the image reminded him of an environmental concern in that country. Although the image itself did not show the specific environmental concern, it LOOKED LIKE the environmental concern.